McCarthy’s immigration rebranding: With eyes on the race for Speaker — or minority leader, if Republicans lose the chamber — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is sliding far to the right on immigration policy in an effort to woo hard-line conservatives who may oppose his leadership bid next year, POLITICO’s Rachael Bade reports.

The California Republican revealed a new bill earlier this week that would fully fund President Donald Trump’s $25 billion border wall with Mexico, a key White House priority, Bade writes. “That comes just a couple of weeks after McCarthy pushed for a House vote on his resolution rejecting the idea of allowing undocumented immigrants the right to vote.”

And conservatives are taking note. "Kevin McCarthy’s new bill to complete the wall and gain clear control of our southern border is vital for our safety," Trump ally Newt Gingrich wrote in a tweetstorm on McCarthy's bill, later adding: "Kevin McCarthy has the only practical, intellectually honest response to the wave of drugs and violent gangs crossing our southern border."

Notably, both of McCarthy’s immigration announcements were given as exclusives to the conservative news outlet Breitbart, which has long torched GOP leadership on immigration. Bade says Breitbart appears to have an “unlikely openness to McCarthy, a surprising development that suggests his moves are working.” More from POLITICO here.

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HIGH FEES, FEWER HOURS: As nearly 8,000 Marriott workers across the country protest over reduced hours and call for better wages, a look inside the hotel chain’s credit union shows that overdraft fees may be amplifying workers’ financial struggles. The Marriott Credit Union — whose board consists primarily of Marriott managers and whose membership of about 32,000 includes housekeepers, dishwashers and cooks — has been charging fees that are “unusually high” compared to other service-sector employers, Noam Scheiber reports for the New York Times. Those fees make up more than 1.7 percent of the credit union’s assets.

Credit unions were created to help workers lower on the totem pole get access to capital, explains Scheiber, but as “falling interest rates made loans less lucrative, credit unions largely turned to fees to help replace the lost income. Over the past quarter-century, the average value of the fees collected for every dollar of interest income has risen to nearly 17 cents, from just under 7 cents" — though that figure can reach much higher. Marriott takes in 52 cents in fees for every dollar of interest income, according to the Times.

“As a result, some Marriott workers find themselves in a kind of financial double jeopardy: Low pay from Marriott keeps their account balances minimal, and those modest balances lead to more fees, crimping their assets further.” Read more from the Times here.

Speaking of the Marriott strike, workers organized by UNITE HERE have walked out in eight cities across the U.S. including San Francisco, Detroit and Boston. Organizers say that without negotiations, more workers in more cities will be joining the strikes soon.

“UNITE HERE remains open to returning to the table in any of the 8 strike cities, and we have returned to the table in multiple locations since walking out on strike. Marriott has been unprepared and unprofessional in all instances since,” the union said in a statement.

APPEAL OVER TPS INJUNCTION: The Justice Department on Thursday appealed a federal judge’s decision to halt the termination of Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan. The judge ruled earlier this month that TPS recipients would “indisputably” suffer irreparable harm and hardship if they were removed from the program, which gives them the ability to live and work in the U.S. legally. The case now heads to the 9th Circuit. Read the appeal here.

NO GAINS FROM NEW NAFTA?: While President Donald Trump is touting the gains from his recently negotiated NAFTA 2.0 (the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement), economists tell the Wall Street Journal they don’t believe the deal will lead to more employment or economic growth, Harriet Torry writes. “Nearly 55% of respondents said they expect no change to U.S. manufacturing employment from the deal. A third of economists said they expected the agreement to bring a modest increase in manufacturing jobs, and nearly 10% expected a modest decline. Just one economist polled expects it will cause a significant increase in manufacturing employment.”

“‘The trade agreement could force manufacturing labor costs higher, especially in the auto sector, leading to less employment growth,’” other things being equal, Scott Anderson of Bank of the West told the Journal. Read more of the survey responses here.

Related read: “Trump bullied his way to a trade deal. Now he may be overselling its benefits.” from POLITICO’s Doug Palmer.

Worker Safety

OSHA SOFTENS RETALIATION POLICIES: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is softening its interpretation an Obama-era rule that sought to prevent employers from retaliating against employees for reporting injuries, throwing a bone to employers who argued the rule deterred their safety programs.

Employers have fretted over language included in the preamble of the 2016 recordkeeping rule that emphasized that employers’ procedures for reporting workplace injuries must not also deter employees from reporting. OSHA subsequently issued a series of memos clarifying that for example, programs that offer rewards to employees based on low injury rates, or drug testing an employee after a work-related injury that could not have been caused by impairment, would be considered retaliation under the rule. In a memo issued to regional administrators Thursday, OSHA clarified that “if an employer takes a negative action against an employee under a rate-based incentive program,” the agency will not cite an employer for retaliation “as long as the employer has implemented adequate precautions to ensure that employees feel free to report an injury or illness.”

Employers have argued that the Obama OSHA’s interpretation of the rule penalized businesses that used such programs to improve safety and created confusion around permissible drug-testing. The memo issued Thursday supersedes the Obama-era interpretations and adds that most instances of drug testing are permissible under the law and that employers can include elements in an incentive program to “emphasize safety” and not just injury rates. Read the memo here.

WASH. FARMERS FRONT BILL FOR VISA OVERSIGHT: Washington farmers who are expected to hire 30,000 foreign seasonal workers this year may soon have to front the cost for ensuring those workers are being treated in accordance with federal labor laws, Don Jenkins reports for the Capital Press. The state of Washington is proposing that farmers pay thousands in new fees to bolster oversight of the H-2A program, as the number of foreign seasonal farmworkers has skyrocketed in recent years — while money from the federal government to monitor the program has been flat.

“Although the H-2A program is guided by federal rules, the state inspects farms to ensure employers are complying with workplace and housing rules,” Jenkins writes. He says the state’s Employment Security Department doesn’t have the cash to do the job.

“The department is proposing to charge farms $1,000 to apply to use H-2A workers, plus $100 per worker for the first 1,000. After that, the fee would drop to $50 per employee. The department estimates that if the fees were in place next year, they would raise $3.18 million.” More here.

EB-5 LAWSUIT TARGETS FLORIDA BROKERS: Dozens of Chinese nationals sued Florida real estate developers on Thursday over alleged fraud in the EB-5 visa program, which allows foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. commercial project to apply for a green card. One of the defendants in the suit is Nicholas Mastroianni II, the CEO of U.S. Immigration Fund, an EB-5 company that sought to raise money for Kushner Companies luxury buildings in Jersey City, N.J. Mastroianni also has ties to Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who took a plea deal with federal prosecutors in August. Read the complaint here.

Coffee Break

— “Long Beach continues to grapple with how to address misclassification of port truck drivers,” from The Long Beach Post

—“White Americans Gain the Most From Trump’s Tax Cuts, Report Finds,” from The New York Times

— “The Trucking Industry Is a ‘Sweatshop on Wheels.’ Here’s How Kavanaugh Could Make It Worse,” from In These Times

— “How Trump's Immigration Policies Are Provoking Insecurity at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” from The Pacific Standard

CORRECTION: The Oct. 11 edition of Morning Shift incorrectly stated Jordan Barab’s title at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He was deputy assistant secretary under the Obama administration.

About The Author : Rebecca Rainey

Rebecca Rainey is an employment and immigration reporter with POLITICO Pro and the author of the Morning Shift newsletter.

Prior to joining POLITICO in August 2018, Rainey covered the Occupational Safety and Health administration and regulatory reform on Capitol Hill. Her work has been published by The Washington Post and the Associated Press, among other outlets.

Rainey holds a bachelor’s degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

She was born and raised on the eastern shore of Maryland and grew up 30 minutes from the beach. She loves to camp, hike and be by the water whenever she can.